No love lost

I guess you can safely say that Rob Sobhani won’t be on Dan Bongino’s Christmas card list this holiday season. From Deputy Campaign Manager Sharon Strine:

First, Rob Sobhani pulled the wool over the eyes of Maryland Democrats, as reported by The Baltimore Sunand The Gazette. Now, the increasingly brazen Sobhani, who is running as an ‘Independent’, is attempting to fool Maryland Republicans as well.

Although Sobhani recently expressed his support for the Maryland DREAM Act, today he held a telephone town hall directed at Republicans featuring Maryland Republican Delegate Neil Parrott, who has been a vocal opponent of the legislation.

Sobhani’s too-numerous-to-count and openly contradictory campaign positions are a disservice to Maryland voters. Maryland voters are entitled to know who and what they are voting for, not a political chameleon using his massive personal fortune to engage in a campaign of deception and mystery.

Since entering the race – funded by a multi-million-dollar ‘personal loan’, Rob Sobhani has been hard to pin down on his beliefs.

Is this the type of character we want as our next U.S. Senator – someone willing to throw away principles when it suits them? Maryland deserves better.

While our campaign fundamentally disagrees with the politics of Senator Ben Cardin with regard to his stance on taxes, Obamacare, and school choice, we respect him as a person. With Sobhani’s continued disingenuous and dishonest campaign activities, we unfortunately cannot say the same for him.

The thing I’ve never been able to figure out about Rob Sobhani is why he couldn’t do all the job creation funding he promises by himself. Why does he need the Senate seat to bring in that much investment? Is his work going to be up for sale to the highest foreign bidder, regardless of overall intent? We already see dozens of officeholders who come in as middle- to upper-class and leave as multi-millionaires despite an annual salary in the low six-figures. Funny how that seems to work, huh?

Advocating for a flat tax rate for most taxpayers as he does or calling for a tax deduction for student loans – yes, that is appropriate for the political realm because a layman can’t necessarily accomplish that goal. (I’m not sure I agree with the latter because I’d prefer a consumption-based tax, but that’s something which can and should be debated on the floor of Congress.)

Yet the other day I heard a radio spot aimed at a conservative audience (because it aired during Sean Hannity’s show) attempting to tell me Rob Sobhani was the only conservative choice. This example, though, is just one of many positions Sobhani’s campaign posts on his Facebook page:

(W)hile Rob and many of us believe that abortion is terrible, Rob believes the decision should remain between a woman and her doctor. If the majority of citizens and the representatives you elect have an urgent need to change the law, he trusts it will happen because in a democracy it is the will of the people that should rule. As for the Affordable Care Act, Rob believes the insurance industry should be reformed. Rob believes that there are positive aspects to the bill, including the provisions on pre-existing conditions, and extending coverage to young adults, but thinks the bill should be amended to improve the insurance market mechanism so that it would be less dependent on the government and better suited to free market forces.

Does that sound conservative to you? Not only is the first part a code phrase for “I’m pro-abortion,” the fact he only wants to tweak Obamacare to remove certain parts certainly doesn’t make him sound very conservative in my book. Those positions are one small step away from how Ben Cardin would vote, and I suspect if elected Rob would be much more likely to caucus with the Democrats than the Republicans.

And it’s worth repeating one phrase, just to make sure readers understand the ignorance exhibited within:

If the majority of citizens and the representatives you elect have an urgent need to change the law, he trusts it will happen because in a democracy it is the will of the people that should rule.

Mr. Sobhani (or whichever lackey of his wrote this): please note well that our nation was founded as a Constitutional republic. We are NOT a democracy. I would expect Ben Cardin to make such a mistake since he’s a liberal Democrat, but you should know better. In the Pledge of Allegiance, we do not express our fealty to the democracy for which we stand! That ignorance alone should disqualify him from office. Not only that, but we expect our representatives to have some sort of principle and not flip-flop depending on how the political wind of the moment seems to blow.

There is a very, very good chance that Rob Sobhani may have taken enough votes away from Dan Bongino already to cost him the Senate seat and allow Ben Cardin another six years on the public dole as one of the most leftward-leaning Senators in the country – a position that’s completely wrong for Maryland. For true conservatives, the choice is clear but it’s not Rob Sobhani. Don’t waste your vote on the ones trying to purchase a Senate seat.

Update: A friend of mine who wished to remain anonymous allowed me to use this picture of a sample ballot passed out by Penn National and paid for by…guess who. Read the very top endorsement and tell me again that Rob Sobhani is a conservative:

Comments

6 Responses to “No love lost”

ZoeC
on
November 3rd, 2012 9:43 pm

The real question is again why is Bongino so darn focused on Sobhani ? It aggravates me so much that Bongino has lost complete sight of Cardin in the last couple months. At the end of the day whether Sobhani entered the race or not, Bongino’s campaign manager did a terrible job of making a good argument for Democrats to vote for him. Now it’s clear Bongino is running for second place, more concerned with pulling down Sobhani with him and saving his party from the same of coming in third, than beating Cardin.

College Republican
on
November 4th, 2012 12:22 am

Oh yes. Rob Sobhani cost Dan the Senate seat. Not the 2 to 1 Democratic voter registration or the next to non-existent name recognition Bongino maintains with Maryland voters. But don’t worry, I’m sure when we’ve purged Independents and our party has achieved total ideological homogeneity, then we’ll start winning elections.

No, once we educate Marylanders on the benefits of conservative governance we will win elections. (Obviously we have to look at other states for guidance on this.) How much did you help Dan Bongino (or any other GOP candidate) build name recognition?

Polling data has shown Sobhani draws more from Bongino than Cardin; that’s what I based my assertion on.

Hillary Pennington
on
November 4th, 2012 12:57 am

Ironically, there is another one of these floating around with different stances on the ballot initiatives, especially 3…which I’m shocked anyone would be against.

Concerned Citizen
on
November 4th, 2012 8:31 pm

Anyone who believes that a Republican can win a federal level office in Maryland is living in an alternate universe. Republicans talk about being conservative, but they confuse social conservatism with real conservatism. Social conservatism IS NOT a traditional Republican value. Social conservatism was the price that the GOP had to pay to implement Nixon’s Southern Strategy.

Sadly, the GOP that I joined in the seventies no longer exists (i.e., the Mac Mathias GOP). What we have today are the old southern and northern wings of the Democratic Party. The modern GOP is primarily composed of three major factions; namely, the social conservatives, the neoconservatives and the supply-siders.

As stated above, social conservatives were recruited from the southern wing of the Democratic Party after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I seriously doubt that Barry Goldwater would agree with the evangelical stance that the GOP has taken today.

The neoconservative faction of the GOP was incubated in Henry “Scoop” Jackson wing of the Democratic Party during Vietnam. Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz were all Scoop Jackson disciples. Ronald Reagan recruited the Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic Party during his first term in office. Warmongering IS NOT a traditional Republican value. Warmongering leads to big government through BIG DEFENSE SPENDING.

All of the sane Republicans have been driven from the GOP by the bible thumpers and the warmongers over the last two decades. Republicans who are fiscally conservative, but socially moderate to liberal have no place in the modern GOP, as the modern GOP has a de facto religious test for office (Barry Goldwater must be rolling over his grave).

Finally, let’s not forget the supply-siders. After all, they are the puppet masters who are pulling the strings. Grover Norquist, Jack Abramoff, and Ralph Reed are all products of the supply-side faction of the GOP. The supply-siders have one goal and that goal is to reduce the tax on capital gains and dividend income to zero. Every penny of tax that is cut from both of these forms of income is shifted onto the backs of ordinary income earners.

Why should a worker have to pay up to 35% marginal income tax and 7.62% (15.3% for the self-employed) FICA/Medicare tax when the top tax rate on long-term capital gains 15%? Not only are long-term capital gains taxed lighter than income derived from work, long-term capital gains are also free from the FICA and Medicare taxes, as FICA and Medicare are payroll taxes, not income taxes; therefore, one must work for the privilege of paying these taxes.

Now, there are those who will throw out the moldy old “investment creates job” nugget. The truth is that most long-term capital gains are earned in secondary markets (i.e., investor to investor trades), so the investment creates jobs argument is a non sequitur.

The long-term capital gains rate is the lowest that it has been in since before WWII, and the only jobs that are being created in large numbers are being created offshore because companies and investors are arbitraging global labor. Americans cannot compete on cost. We live in a high cost of living country, and regulations have nothing to do with our high cost of living. It has to do with the nation’s wealth being controlled by one-tenth of one percent of the population, and a tax code that enriches this group at the expense of everyone else. If all income were subject to the progressive marginal rates on ordinary income (what the average American refers to as the income tax brackets), the rates for workers at every income level would be reduced.

Finally, people who live with the illusion that their 401K accounts make them real investors are living in an alternate universe. The 401K program is a yet another pyramid scheme that was concocted by the top one-tenth of one percent of the population to drive up the value of their holdings. If you do not believe me, why are 401K distributions taxed as ordinary income? If the 410K program was a true investment program, we would pay ordinary income tax on untaxed principal when we withdrew it. All gains would be taxed as capital gains, but that’s not how the program works. It is a glorified savings account with the volatility of capital investment. Furthermore, unlike true capital investments, 401K losses cannot be used to offset gains.

In closing, the only logical political choice for a true conservative today is to vote Libertarian. Voting for a Republican is just voting for a different type of big government.

Since I consider myself a sane Republican, your point is already wrong. Nor do I buy into that extreme argument that the nation’s wealth is controlled by .01% of the population. Certainly there are a number of wealthy people in this nation, but those who earned it I don’t begrudge. It sounds to me like you have a case of class envy.

Let me ask you another question, though. Why should a worker – or anyone else, for that matter – pay taxes on income or capital gains at all? I’ve argued for a long time that a consumption tax is the way to go. Now obviously we have some variants of consumption taxes out there, such as bridge tolls, licensing fees, etc. Generally the problem is that governmental entities arbitrarily raise these rates to create money-makers for the general fund rather than specifically for the purpose for which they were intended. That somewhat leads to my longtime argument about the tax code being used as a method of curtailing freedom rather than raising revenue.

As for the argument about voting Libertarian: the political reality of this day and age is that, in nearly all cases, the one who wins is either a Democrat or Republican. A Libertarian is generally lucky to see 1% of the vote, regardless of his or her true merits. The Libertarian Party has been around since 1971 and how many major electoral victories do they have? Zero, in 41 years.

Whether you agree with the direction of the GOP or not, moderates have two choices: far left or far right. Despite your bluster, it seems like Republicans always cave in to the squishy middle as elections draw closer (Mitt Romney is doing this as well, with his only saving grace being we know just how badly Barack Obama has mismanaged this country in the last four years. If Obama had triangulated like Bill Clinton after 1994, Obama would be up ten points.)

What the Republicans need to do after the election is grow a spine and begin to reverse the excesses of government, not the excesses of wealth. Getting government out of the way will take care of the latter problem.

Hit My Tip Jar

The server isn't free...

And did you know you can support me through Amazon? See right sidebar below.